03/17/2017 DAB Transcript

Numbers 26:1-51 ~ Luke 2:36-52 ~ Psalm 60:1-12 ~
Proverbs 11:15

Today is the 17th day
of March (I had to think for a second). March! It’s been looking so much like April outside
that I was confused, or maybe I was just getting ahead of myself or maybe I was
just confused period. It doesn’t
matter. All that matters is hopefully I
can read words today and I believe that I can.
So welcome to the Daily Audio Bible here as we approach the ending of
another week. We’ve been reading from
the Expanded Bible this week, so back into the book of Numbers we go, chapter
26, verses 1 through 51 today.

Commentary

In the book of Luke we’re getting
a glimpse into Jesus’ childhood and it is fascinating what we can glean there
because it gives us insight into how Jesus became who he was and who he was
known to be. Jesus has made the Passover
pilgrimage to Jerusalem from Nazareth, which is about 90 miles and no real good
easy way to do it. It is uphill. This is an annual thing and this would be the
same journey Jesus would take much later in his life toward the cross. So this was something that Jesus was
accustomed to, being in Jerusalem at Passover, at festival. He grew up doing this.

So we can see his parents’
posture because a group had come from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the festival
and this happened every year and so when they all left, Jesus was just assumed
to be in the group with them because there would be family and kids and they
would talk and kind of go on their own journey.
So it is like a day out of Jerusalem, a long day’s walk back toward
Nazareth and nighttime comes and Jesus is nowhere to be found. So Mary and Joseph are freaking out, as any
parent would be. They are searching and
searching and searching and finally they have to go back, they have to go a
day’s journey back to Jerusalem alone, outside of the group, which means they
are going to have to take this journey back to Nazareth alone, which puts them
in a bit of danger. They will be
traveling without people that they know.

So they are searching all over
the place to find Jesus and they find him in the Temple. You can only imagine what was going through
their minds as they were coming to the Temple, asking God, “Please help us find
Jesus.” I can only imagine for Mary,
“Lord, I have lost your son. I don’t
know what to say.” I mean, what do you
say? “Jesus, help me find you?” Or maybe that is exactly what you say.

Jesus is found in the Temple and
Mary is exasperated, as a mother would be, and relieved and angry, and all of
the things that moms do in situations like this, she is that. So the humanity is just dripping from the
scene. And Jesus is just a boy. He’s like, “Mom, I’ve got to be about my Father’s
business. Of course, you would find me
here in my Father’s house.”

What is interesting is what Jesus
is doing in his Father’s house. He is
sitting with the rabbis and the teachers of the Mosaic Law and they are amazed
at his questions and insights as a boy.
Jesus isn’t just talking to local rabbis. He’s like talking to the big shots in
Jerusalem in the Temple of the Most High God.
This is important as the story goes forward.

As Jesus grows up and moves into
his own ministry, he is very compelling as a communicator and miraculous as a
healer, but he is a long way from Jerusalem.
He’s way, way in a different region up in the Galilee to the north. So yeah, as things begin to heat up around
Jesus and he begins to draw crowds in the Galilee, it’s not too long that the
Bible shows us the people, leaders, rabbis, experts in the Mosaic Law begin to
travel from Jerusalem to see Jesus, to check out what is going on around this
guy. Usually it would be the other way
around, right? The most educated, most
gifted, most talented, most elite would be in Jerusalem in the Temple and
people would travel to Jerusalem to have meetings with them. But Jesus was that little kid. He was that one that was so insightful at
such a young age and so inquisitive. He
was the one that said he is just here to be about his Father’s business in his Father’s
house when his parents showed up to find him.
And it was all cute then, but maybe he wasn’t joking around. Maybe he really meant what he said and
wouldn’t that be blasphemy? What is
going on here?

So we see how Jesus begins to
show up on the radar way before he was ever in ministry as we go forward in the
book of Luke, but as we read the gospels, we see this. The religious leaders aren’t initially
antagonistic toward Jesus per se. They
are investigating and trying to check out what he is actually saying. It does get confrontational because Jesus is
willing to sidestep the tradition and ritual of the Mosaic Law. He is able to see clearly what became of it
and he is trying to unpack the proper posture to look at toward it. Of course, in the end the religious leaders
won’t tolerate it, can’t tolerate it. It
is going to upend the entire power structure of the people, but they remain
divided. Not everyone is out to get
Jesus. Some secretly believe. Some come and have private meetings. In the end they decide it is better for one
man to die than for everybody to get destroyed by this man’s message, a
colossal miscalculation of what God was up to as we watch Jesus’ life.

Prayer

Jesus, we thank you for your
life, for your humanity, that you came here and lived a life showing us what
ours is supposed to look like and all of the tension that brings when good and
heaven come to earth. Then all of a
sudden we’re trying to filter it back through what we think that we know and we
continue to just repeat the vicious cycle that has been the human story since
we breached your trust and allowed evil and sin into this world. So as we read the gospels and as we learn
your story and how you participated in a human life, we get a very clear
picture of how far it has gone and how far we have fallen. Even just in the gospel reading today, just
understanding how it was that you got on the radar in the first place, it shows
us the wrestling of humanity when it comes in contact with divinity. When man and God come face to face, all kinds
of things happen, but what is supposed to happen is this integration, this
restoration of how things were always supposed to be for us and it is
disruptive, as it should be, because it exposes how far we’ve gone. So come, Holy Spirit, into this as we
contemplate and meditate upon it and as we continue forward in the gospel of
Luke in the coming days. Help us to see
Jesus as what we are really supposed to look like, as what our human life is
supposed to be. Come Jesus, we
pray. In your mighty name, amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the
website. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what is going on
around here and there is stuff going on, but the More Gathering for Women, that
is probably the next thing that is beeping the loudest, the brightest on the
radar, if there was a radar for such things like that. It’s coming up. Registration is actually going to be closing
in one week. Here we are, the last week
to register for More. That will cut off
on the 23rd, which is a week from yesterday, so a little less than a
week. So if you’ve been kind of on the
fence, then this is the time to really discern and ask Jesus if this is your
time to come to the mountains of Georgia and just be in a sisterhood of women
from all over the world who are looking for Jesus, who are looking for that
intimacy, who are looking for the next steps, the reset, what the future
trajectory is supposed to look like.
That is the More Gathering for Women.
So a few more days and you can check it out. Check it out at www.DailyAudioBible.com or www.MoreGathering.com and you’ll find
out all of the details, everything that you would want to know as you consider
coming. We’ll look forward with great
anticipation. The intercessory team has
been praying already for months for you.
So it will be nice to see you in person, people that we’ve been praying
for all long. So yeah, check it
out. We look forward to seeing you very
soon in the mountains of Georgia just outside of Atlanta.

If you want to partner with the
Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com. There is a link on the home page. Thank you humbly, deeply for this community
and what we do together. It is the fact
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And, as always, if you have a
prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian.
I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

Hello family. This is Teri B. from Delaware and I am
calling with a praise report. From
August 2000 through February 2016 my family was just plagued with medical
problems. Between my husband and my son,
there were just nonstop issues, two kidney transplants, traumatic brain injury,
seizures, super bacterial infections, flesh-eating bacteria, burst bladder, brain
stem puncture, lymphoma. That’s just to
name a few. We barely made it through a
month without something going wrong and from July 2016 through February 2016 we
had 911 ambulance calls twice per week.
We received more __________ notices than anyone should, but they always
pulled through. Beginning in 2015 and
2016 God transformed both of them and neither have been admitted to the
hospital for over a year. It’s amazing
to be able to breathe deeply and not always be on the edge waiting for the next
medical disaster. So I thank you to all
my DAB family who has prayed for my family through the years and thank God for
this time of healing. We praise God.

Hi everyone. This is Chris from Connecticut. I’m calling to encourage Jonathon in Kentucky
who has his father going in for prostate cancer. I just want to encourage him in that my own
pastor recently was diagnosed with that.
I’m not sure it was at the same severity as what you had of what your
father is going through, but God ended up turning that very scary thing into a
huge blessing and God’s favor was all around that situation when he went in to
see the doctors. So I will be praying
for you and your family as you move in to put those gold markers in. I am believing with you that God will do a
mighty work. God bless you guys. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Rosa. This is my first time calling. I just really wanted to reach out to Deneen
from Virginia. I’m a little behind on
the Daily Audio Bible, but I’m trying to follow all the days and I just heard
your message, Deneen, and I was so moved by it because I can relate in some
level with your experience. I just
wanted to tell you, Deneen, that you are not your past. The Lord has such a beautiful life for you
and I want you and He wants you to trust him, which I think is usually like one
of the hardest things to do when we suffer with PTSD and anxiety problems, but
God wants you to trust in him. He made
you and he loves you and you are not defined by your past. The Lord brought to my mind this word where
it says that him whom Christ set free is free indeed and you are free from all
that. So I just want you to hang onto
the word of God and to the hand of Jesus and through Jesus you will have an
amazing, amazing, amazing life. God will
surprise you if you just fix your eyes on him and trust him and continue
seeking him. He really makes a
difference in your life. He certainly
made a difference in mine. I just really
want you to know that. I want you to
look forward to all the things that God will do with you, for you, and through
you. So I just want you to be
encouraged. I will pray for you. I love you and I want you to know you are not
alone. I’m excited for where God is
going to take you and he is going to use you to save so many other lives. So God bless you. God bless you all, my Daily Audio Bible
family. Thank you so much for always
calling and praying for each other.
Thank you so much, Brian. You’re
amazing.

Hi, my name is anonymous
and… My name is Kayla and I want to pray
over my mind, please. And for America
and the President just to, I don’t know, make the right decisions and
everything, even myself and my mind, make the right decisions. Yeah, and I want to pray for love and my
daughter McKenzie and that’s about it.
Thank you. Bye-bye.

Hi, this is Victorious Soldier,
just calling tonight to pray for some of the Dabbers. And I just wanted to give a little bit of my
celebration. This week my husband and I
celebrated 24 years of marriage and I’m just thanking God for just bringing us
through the challenges. We are still
here and we are still letting God have his way.
I just want to pray for my sister from Birmingham, Pauline M. I want to pray for the truck driver. I want to pray for Janine from VA. I want to pray for __________, for Debbie,
the things that she has gone through and how God has been with her. I’m just so glad, Debbie, that God is
faithful and that he showed you so many great and wonderful things. Even in the bad times God is good in your
life. Continue, Lord, to bless Debbie and continue
to bless Stephanie in North Carolina.
Continue to call, Debbie. There
are a lot of people that are like you, but the enemy wants to make you feel
like there is something wrong. There is
nothing wrong with us. Everything is
right because God has ordered it. I just
want to pray for those, Lord, in the name of Jesus. You know the challenges. You know the difficulties. You know even the pressure, Lord. You know that you are able to do exceedingly,
abundantly above all that you ask or think.
Lord, I just want to convey to the Dabbers, continue to pray until
something happens. Faith is believing
that God is telling the truth. That when
he says it, it is what he says it is.
Father, you show them. You show
them yourself as a mighty God. You show
them as a God that can do anything.

Good morning my beautiful sisters
and brothers. This is Dawn calling from
New York and Candace, honey, from Oregon, oh sweetie, I just heard your prayer
request on the podcast this morning just a few minutes ago and we are standing
with you in prayer. I’m so, so sorry for
this shocking and scary report about your husband. We just want to pray with you right now. We’re surrounding you with our prayers. This is a time we certainly wish we could be
near you. We just pray that God will
bring friends around you who really stand with you and comfort you. O Lord, we just pray for Candace right now,
for her husband, for her family. O
Jesus, please have mercy on this family during this scary time. We just ask you, God, for your comfort, for
your healing, for your strength. We lift
up our precious sister to you, Lord. We
ask you to just comfort her, Father, and strengthen her at this time. Help her to know that she has sisters and
brothers around the world who are praying with her and we ask you, God, to
please, please give your supernatural comfort and peace to her now. We do love you, Candace, honey, and I’m just
so sorry to hear that you have this scary situation to deal with right now. God bless you.
We’re praying with you.